


the way you hurt me [it's irresistible]

by pagan_mint



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4
Genre: Blood, Gen, M/M, Onesided Sajay, callin out Mohan for being a dick, hand holding, or Both, sabal has zero chill, save your bf(f)'s life or make out, smutty cpr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 10:02:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5581519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagan_mint/pseuds/pagan_mint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ajay is a different kind of quiet lately. When he first arrived in Kyrat, back in the days of Bhadra and Banapur, he was the kind of quiet that Sabal was able to pour noise into, molding the man and the words in his mind, on his tongue, into what the older man wanted him to think and say. Now it is the time of the Tarun Matara and telling people where to place their loyalties, and the son of Mohan's silence has changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the way you hurt me [it's irresistible]

Ajay is a different kind of quiet lately. When he first arrived in Kyrat, back in the days of Bhadra and Banapur, he was the kind of quiet that Sabal was able to pour noise into, molding the man and the words in his mind, on his tongue, into what the older man wanted him to think and say. Now it is the time of the Tarun Matara and telling people where to place their loyalties, and the son of Mohan's silence has changed. It is sullen, it is no longer something to be filled but something that Sabal can feel his words bouncing off of, hurled back at him with an inexplicable vehemence that he cannot understand.

A new regent, self-proclaimed and stressing that he is little more than a voice for the Tarun Matara and her divine will, Sabal does not expect things to go smoothly. Still, with Pagan Min relieved of his power and his life, he assumed things would be at least a little easier. It comes as a surprise when things prove to be more difficult than they were before. More wild animal attacks, fewer weapons caches, frequent inconvenient accidents. Sabal cannot think that Ajay would be responsible, but when he tries to engage the younger man in conversation about it, Ajay meets him with a cold and silent stare. Says quietly that he has to go, and then leaves, and is not seen again for days - sometimes weeks. Once he leaves for two months without saying anything. Sabal fears the worst, prays to Kyra for the son of Mohan's safety, chokes back his fear every time a report is brought to him bearing bad news. Tries to hide his relief when Ajay shows back up, bearing several new scars, eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep (or something else?). Sabal asks him where he's been and receives a smile that's half of what it used to be. "Shangri-La," Ajay answers, his voice barely audible and the bite in it making the regent have to keep himself from flinching back. Sabal does not ask him again.

Ajay is quiet when they finally fight. Sabal's voice rises to heights it had not even reached in his worst arguments with Amita, scraping his throat raw, giving his words a jagged edge like a broken kukri. Ajay keeps his voice level, his tone reasonable, his face expressionless, until Sabal spits the words.

"Your _father_ would have _never_ stood for this!"

Ajay flinches back, violently, startling Sabal. Something changes in his eyes. Ajay's eyes have always been the most expressive thing about him, saying volumes even when their owner only spoke a few words. Since Pagan's fall and Sabal's rise, they have been unreadable - but now they speak volumes, and the older man is shocked at what they are saying.

"Good," Ajay responds, his voice barely audible, a whisper rasped out across a tongue like sandpaper. "I hope to _Kyra_ that I never resemble my father."

He offers no explanation, no elaboration, no further words. He simply rounds the table, makes to walk past Sabal. Acting instead of thinking, the rebel leader (the regent of Kyrat, the protector of the land, the follower of the Tarun Matara) reaches out and catches him by the forearm. Ajay stops before he will let himself be stopped. Sabal feels the muscles beneath his hand - tense, hard. Ajay is angry. More so than he's letting on.

"Do not walk away from me," Sabal says. He has never let emotion speak for him before. He speaks with it, frequently - it is a part of him, of his style of leadership - but this is the first moment he has let himself talk without considering the consequences. But this is Ajay. Ajay Ghale, the son of Mohan, the boy who looked at him with stars in his eyes, who must still hold some regard for the man who welcomed him to Kyrat and dug him up from an avalanche. "Walk away and we are finished, Ajay." Words his pride will not let him take back.

Ajay looks at him, and Sabal can barely look back. His eyes are flat and silent once again. When he is like this, he seems so much like Mohan. Sabal resists an urge to shake him. _Talk to me, Ajay. We can work together on this._ They have to work together. He needs Ajay by his side, as much as he needed him to get where they are now.

"We were finished a long time ago," Ajay says, and walks out the door. Sabal does not stop him, his hand trailing from the sleeve of the gaudy bloodstained windbreaker for the last time. He is still hot with anger, but it's being cooled by the sudden realization of what has happened, like someone took snow from the mountain peaks and dropped it down the back of his neck.

_Ajay Ghale has left the Golden Path,_ Rana reports on the radio later - noisy, excited, appalled, sensationalist - and in a sudden fit, Sabal draws his gun and smashes it into the dashboard. The radio breaks. Fine. It was a Royal Army car anyway. The driver is tactful and says nothing.

**

The assassination attempt is not entirely unexpected, but what Sabal does not expect is for it to come from close quarters. The man he chose as Ajay's replacement turns on him - dissatisfied with his place, perhaps, eager to rise in the ranks, to be regent himself - eyes mad, his back to the crowd, shouting some kind of speech as he backs Sabal towards the temple. Sabal is still forming his prayer to Kyra when someone drops from one of the giant statues framing the temple door. Startled, the gunman's shot is just barely preceded by one from the weapon of the interloper, of whom all Sabal can see is mottled seafoam green - a color quickly marred by a spreading patch of blood red, in a place where blood should never be seen outside of the body.

Ajay is quiet as Sabal holds him in his arms. "Don't die, brother," the older man begs. It's all he can say. He wants to say more – _I'm sorry, why did you come back, I don't deserve you, stay alive_ – but he can't seem to find the words. "You will be fine. You're a tough man to kill."

Ajay looks at him - looks through him. He has the gaze of a man who has nothing left to lose. "I didn't kill Amita," he says, and his voice is strong but not loud. "And I didn't kill Pagan. I let them both live. I killed hundreds - I killed so many other people. But I couldn't kill Amita. She just - she just had some different opinions. She was wrong, maybe, but that's no reason for murder. And Pagan - " He smiles, the way he had used to smile when Sabal would clap a hand on his shoulder and tell him he was proud of him. "Shit. Pagan was the only one who ever told me the truth. He just wanted me to be happy, y'know? Heartbroken old maniac. I was his only family. He would've - would've done anything, for me." His gaze starts to wander, but comes back to Sabal after a moment. "I would've done anything for you. Until - until you told me to kill Amita, I - "

Someone arrives with a medkit, then, and Sabal doesn't get to hear the rest of Ajay's sentence. He's shoved out of the way, pulled to his feet by helping hands. Taking a step back, he runs into something and looks down. The body of Ajay's replacement. His would-be assassin. Blood is pooling underneath it from a shot to the head - perfect aim, even in such an urgent situation.

It’s vindictive and a waste of valuable bullets and completely immature, but Sabal pulls out his gun and adds a shot of his own to the traitor’s body anyway.

**

Against the odds, Ajay recovers, and Sabal goes to see him as soon as possible.

“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” he mumbles, still a little loopy from the pain medication that the Golden Path has dug out of dusty storeroom corners for him. “I get shot… all th’ time.”

“Not at _point blank range_ ,” Sabal insists, his voice low and rough as he grips the blankets on Ajay’s bed to keep himself from gripping Ajay’s hand. “That was reckless and foolish and – ”

“And it was for you, dumbass,” Ajay snaps. The exertion is too much, and he turns aside in the throes of what has to be a painful coughing fit. Sabal hates to see him hurting, but at the same time he is thankful for the diversion; Ajay’s words have caught him completely off-guard.

“For… me?” he repeats slowly. “Why would you…” _We were finished a long time ago_. “I thought you hated me.”

Ajay’s coughing fit ends with a gasp and a whimper, but as Sabal turns to call for help, the younger man holds up a hand and shakes his head. After he’s caught his breath, he speaks.

“I don’t hate _you_ ,” he spits out. “I hate what you’re _doing_ , I hate what you’ve _become_ , but you – no one’s ever looked at me like you do. Like you did,” he amends, and Sabal remembers introducing a battered and bruised but still wide-eyed and wondering Ajay Ghale to Banapur. “But you’re different now. You don’t hear me when I speak. You wouldn’t listen. So I quit talking.”

He coughs again, and Sabal stares at him, letting Ajay’s words sink in with the last few months as context. He takes in the bandages around Ajay’s chest, the cuts and bruises all over his body and the signs of sleep deprivation showing around his eyes. He thinks about how Ajay told him that Pagan Min took his passport, how he doesn’t have a way out of Kyrat. How he could have left with Pagan, but didn’t. How everything he’s done has been not for Kyrat, but for Sabal.

“Ajay,” he says abruptly, and then stops. Listens. Realizes.

His heart leaps into his throat at the same time as he leaps out of his chair, lunging to the side of the gunshot victim who isn’t breathing anymore. He’s had to do CPR more times than he would have liked over the years, and sometimes it’s worked and sometimes it hasn’t. He can only pray to Kyra that this time is one of the former, his black bracelet leaving bruises in his wrist as it pounds into his flesh at every frantic press.

“I thought I lost you once,” he exclaims, his accent heavy and his words hysterical. “I _won’t_ lose you again. I _can’t_ , I – ” He’s lost track of compressions, but the younger man still isn’t breathing and Kyra only knows the last time he took a breath and Sabal spits out a _word_ in the same voice he used when he was on the verge of striking Amita. The profanity lingers on his lips as he crushes them to Ajay’s, digging the fingers of one hand into the boy’s hair while his other hand runs along a rough jawline to tilt the chin and open the airway. It’s half a kiss of life and half just a kiss, born of desperation and no little selfishness.

He’s halfway through the second set of compressions when Ajay sputters back into life, gasping and crying out. His breathy whimpering is music to Sabal’s ears, even though it’s obvious he’s in even more pain now. But you can’t be in pain if you’re not alive, and Sabal can’t describe how grateful he is that that’s the case for Ajay.

“What the – ” the younger man yelps. “What the hell happened to me, I feel _worse_ – ”

“Don’t leave me again,” Sabal interrupts him, and softens his eyes into the look he gives injured soldiers and frightened children. Not that there is often a difference between the two. “I promise I’ll listen, from now on. I might not – I might not do it _happily_ , but I swear I will hear what you have to say. You – if you – ” He inhales deeply, starts again. “I cannot rule Kyrat if you are not by my side. Not – not _well_ , not _fairly_. I am an emotional man, Ajay, I know that. I let my feelings decide my actions more often than I’d like. Do not run from me – ” He sweeps his hand in a gesture that encompasses the room, meant to encompass the whole of the land. “Do not run from _this_.”

“You said we were done,” Ajay responds weakly, his hand flexing on top of the blanket. “You said – ”

“I said a lot of things, and I said them because I was afraid.” Sabal is not an honest man, he cannot afford to be an honest man, and yet at this moment he is being more honest than he has been in a long time. “At Jalendu, I was afraid you would usurp my authority. When I gave you that ultimatum, it was because I was afraid you would leave if I didn’t. And then you left anyway.” He continues to speak, the words coming faster past the growing tightness in his throat. “You were willing to die for me, even after everything I’ve done to you, and that has given me clarity. I need you by my side, Ajay. Please – be my second-in-command, help me lead Kyrat.”

Ajay doesn’t answer, but after a panicked moment Sabal hears him breathing into the kind of comfortable silence known only to those on their way to a deep sleep. But the regent doesn’t miss the fact that somewhere between the beginning and end of his fervent speech, Ajay’s hand had found its way into his. Sabal gives calloused fingers a gentle squeeze, and sends up a prayer that his future will be heavy with this special kind of quiet that he wants to hear every day.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! Please leave a kudos and/or a comment if you enjoyed <3


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